George Pitcher is an Anglican priest who serves his ministry at St Bride's, Fleet Street, in London – the "journalists' church".

It's right for the Prime Minister to say sorry for what we did to our children

There is quite a widespread view Gordon Brown will be disingenuous, hypocritical and irrelevant in joining Australia to apologise for the forced transport of poor, orphaned and illegitimate children to the colonies and Commonwealth over ther past century. I heard someone on the radio this morning saying that it wasn't "our society" that had inflicted this suffering, so we have nothing to say sorry for.

I disagree. Of course it isn't Gordon Brown's fault that this cruelty happened, but he isn't making a personal apology, he is saying sorry on behalf of the nation and that is perfectly acceptable. And, frankly, it's a bit rich for some Conservative commentators to claim that this isn't Brown's fault, when they're only too willing most of the time to blame him for everything, from the state of the world economy to the South Sea Bubble, the Black Death and Herod's slaughter of the first-born. Or so it seems.

Perhaps it should be the head of state that says sorry on behalf of the nation: Though Her Majesty may not come across as sufficiently humble, I suppose. But a Prime Minister can speak for the nation and Children's Secretary Ed Balls is right to say that "this is something that we look back on in shame." If we feel shamed by something our forebears did, then it is right to feel penitent. And if we feel penitent, the right thing to do is to apologise on their behalf, since we are the only living connection with the people who did it. And it was, after all, something that was done in our country's name.

More than that, a state apology is a means of affirming our current national values. This is not something we would tolerate or countenance today and, in our collective apology for it, we're both condemning the former actions of our country and committing ourselves to better standards of behaviour.

Of course we can go too far with this. Tony Blair certainly did, with his wobbly-lipped performances that were all about him, rather than the victims of historical crimes. And there is a limit: I don't see much point in apologising for historical events from which there are no living victims, or people who knew them. But there are very real victims of the deportation still with us. And if they garner some satisfaction and peace from the PM's apology, then it must be worthwhile.

"Closure" is often scoffed at as a pretentious Americanism, but if the "orphans" who tell their harrowing childhood stories in the Telegraph today say that an apology is important to them, then who are we to gainsay them?